Inconsistent

October 8, 2004

I'm absolutely snowed under but wanted to take time to share one of those little victories that make me happy to be a translator : I am currently translating human resources documents for a very big Internet company, which I am really enjoying, as it gives me a fascinating insight into life and work as an employee of a big company.

I had to convey the very simple sentence "Overall performance is inconsistent". Easy, you say? Well, inconsistent is a bit of a tricky customer, as it can be translated in several different ways (inégal, non constant, inconstant, etc.). Besides, the general tone of the documents is decidedly modern and down-to-earth, and none of the above options were completely satisfactory, considering the context. I finally found what I thought was a rather good option: the phrase "en dents de scie". Scie = saw, dents = teeth. Picture a saw and its teeth: up and down, up and down… inconsistent!
My translation was : "Performance globale en dents de scie"